and Musicians ’ Medicine,

In this study we investigated whether music rated as emotional is kept in episodic long-term memory better than music rated as less emotional. Furthermore, we examined the influence of musical structure on memory of music. Twenty non musicians participated in this study. Short excerpts of film music were used as the stimuli. In the first session, all subjects listened to 52 extracts of film music 20s to 30s in length as target pieces. Half of the subjects indicated valence and arousal induced by the music; the other half estimated the length of the musical pieces. In the second session, all subjects listened to 10s excerpts of all 104 musical pieces and had to perform a recognition task as well as indicate valence and arousal induced by the music. Musical features which could influence recognition were considered. In both groups, the recognition of musical pieces rated with high arousal and extreme valence was significantly better than pieces rated with moderate arousal and valence. The group that concentrated on the emotional ratings in the first session was able to remember the music better than the other group that focused on the length of the music pieces. Structural features did not influence music recognition performance